What Is Workplace Analytics?

With today’s distributed workforces, it can be difficult to identify where inefficiencies are occurring. In a traditional office setup, you could easily see who was at their desk working and who wasn’t – but with so many employees working remotely, that’s no longer possible.

Workplace management requires a clear picture of an organization’s workplace, workforce and activity – that’s where analytics comes in. With workplace analytics, companies can make better decisions to retain existing talent and improve performance. 

Information from the platforms and software that we use every day can provide powerful insights into the workforce. Let’s take a closer look at what workplace analytics are and how they can help you optimize your hybrid work strategy.

What Is Workplace Analytics?

Workplace analytics are insights that make it easier to measure and assess your organization. Access to the right tools and software provides a secure and cost-effective way for workforce managers to track data.

The insight this tracking provides gives leaders a meaningful way to engage with the workforce and solve common problems associated with their duties. Analytics uses multiple sources of data from different platforms to gain insight into:

• Employee productivity and performance
• Workforce effectiveness
• Real estate utilization
• Office activity
• Resource needs
• Management needs

With workforce analytics, HR and IT leaders can identify organizational patterns and trends to help them make data-driven decisions. The availability of actionable insights provides a transformative environment for the entire workforce.

What are the Benefits of Workplace Analytics?

Workplace analytics are beneficial to any organization trying to determine how their office is being used. From resource forecasting to improving space management decisions, the right analytics tools can lead to more actionable insights that advance key business outcomes. Here are a few of the key benefits:

Data-Driven Decisions

Why take a shot in the dark when you could use data insights to guide your decision making? Workplace analytics enable leaders to make smarter decisions using data points. Things like resource forecasting and decisions around workplace strategy can be

Optimized Space Management

Workplace analytics software enables leader to better understand office utilization so they can make smarter space management decisions. Using multiple data sources, workplace leaders can identify patterns in office traffic, pinpoint which conference rooms and desks are being underutilized and then guide them to make better business decisions for their company spaces.

Better Workplace Experiences

Workplace analytics can also help surface employee preferences in the workplace via feedback forms and patterns in usage so you can create an office space that your teams want to visit. These data insights make it possible to remove barriers between your people and the office by understanding what drives engagement.

Types of Workplace Analytics: Predictive vs. Prescriptive 

With so many companies now embracing hybrid work, platforms for video-conferencing, chat, and file-sharing are a must. The cloud platforms we use to work collaboratively can provide a wealth of data, such as how much time people spend on calls, or how frequently meetings are canceled or rescheduled. 

These insights can be used for prescriptive and predictive analytics:

Predictive Analytics

In this analysis, data is aggregated to forecast future outcomes at your organization. Information about where, how, and when people are working can help you plan for the future, such as focusing on retention of top talent or predicting turnover rates.

Prescriptive Analytics

This tool moves a step past predictions and offers recommendations based on the data. For example, prescriptive analytics can help teams identify steps to increase employee satisfaction, improve the workplace experience, or identify opportunities to provide training and resources to prevent burnout.

Both types of workforce analytics offer important advantages to decision-makers who want to improve their talent pools. Businesses can effectively train and retain the best talent by leveraging both predictive modeling and prescriptive analytics.

Where Can You Access Workplace Analytics?

Clearly, the right analytics tools can have a considerable impact on your workplace plans. When business leaders have access to historical data, they can make smarter decisions for better business outcomes. 

Where exactly you find these data insights, will depend on the platform or workplace analytics solution you’re using. Here are a few examples of different applications that offer workplace analytics to their customers. 

Zoom

Zoom’s video conferencing platform allows users to access dashboard statistics and export usage data as a CSV file. Zoom analytics gathers data including:

• The number of meetings hosted
• The number of participants in meetings and how many messages they sent
• Call quality feedback
• User locations and devices

It’s worth noting, however, that analytics are only available to customers with Zoom Business, Education, or API Plans.

Slack

‍Slack offers direct messaging, private chat groups, and channels to make communication easier across the organization and cut down on email. Slack’s analytics dashboard collects data such on:

• Active users
• Messages sent
• Files uploaded
• Calls and huddles
• Searches
• Changes in membership

Users report that the analytics dashboard is simple to navigate and it’s easy to export. However, not all insights are available across all types of Slack plans. And because Slack is primarily a messaging platform, it may not give you much substantive insight into employee performance.

Robin

As a workplace experience platform, we help companies of all sizes better manage their office resources with meaningful data analytics. For example, in the Robin platform, platform admins can access our workplace analytics to better understand:

• Desk usage
• Meeting room utilization
• Employee attendance
• Office activity
• Resource needs

These insights can impact everything from a real estate portfolio to an employee experience strategy. Remember: better data analytics leads to more informed decisions. In the world of hybrid work, these insights are particularly important when trying to improve collaboration and optimize workplace utilization.

Whatever platform you're using, your analytics tools should be giving you actionable insights that help you drive more strategic decisions across your organization.

Utilizing Workplace Analytics Software

We know that companies do their best work when their people feel productive and supported – that’s where Robin comes in. 

With powerful workplace analytics and reporting features, Robin’s office management software helps teams understand when, where, and how employees are working best. To learn more about our workplace tools, schedule a demo today.